In January 2017 Russia was estimated to have 528 strategic launchers with about 1800 nuclear warheads. The Strategic Rocket Forces
are estimated to have 286 operational missile systems of six types that carry 958 warheads.
The strategic fleet includes 12 strategic missile
submarines with SLBMs on board. The operationally deployed 160 SLBMs can carry 752 nuclear warheads.
Strategic aviation bomber force consists
of 66 bombers that have about 200 weapons assigned to them.
Russia operates two satellites of the new-generation early-warning system, EKS, and a network of early-warning radars.

February 2021 is much closer than it may appear. And with it the prospect of the New START expiration. It probably won't go down in acrimony like the INF treaty is about to do, but that wouldn't matter much in...

A lot of what I know about Soviet nuclear forces and the Soviet military industry I learned from Gennady Khromov (Геннадий Константинович Хромов). He worked with the Military Industrial Commission since the 1960s and over the years was closely involved...

The U.S. State Department released aggregate New START numbers from the 1 March 2019 data exchange. Russia declared 1461 deployed warheads, 524 deployed launchers, and 760 total launchers. In September 2018 the numbers were 1420, 517, and 775 respectively. The...

According to the commander of the Northern Fleet, Nikolay Evmenov, the Tula submarine of the Project 667BDRM/Delta IV class will stay in service until 2029 (as will be the Gepard submarine of the Project 971 class). It's not clear why...

It was difficult to expect that the briefing organized by the Russian Ministry of Defense about a month ago would be taken seriously by the commentariat (especially in the United States) and indeed it wasn't. Yes, they didn't show the...

According to US sources, quoted by CNBC, Russia conducted a test of the Nudol ASAT system on December 23, 2018. The missile was launched from a mobile launcher from a test site in Plesetsk. The launch complex used to...

On February 6, 2019 the Strategic Rocket Forces conducted a successful test launch of a road-mobile RS-24 Yars missile from the Plesetsk test site. The missile was launched at 11:31 MSK (08:31 UTC). The warheads were said to have successfully...

At the INF briefing today, Russia showed a table of missile tests at Kapustin Yar. The table (photo taken by @Moskwitsch) covers only the period from 2008 to 2014 and does not include any tests of naval missiles, but it...

My quick take on the joint Foreign Ministry/Ministry of defense briefing on the INF Treaty that took place in Moscow earlier today. As part of the event, Russia finally showed the 9M729 missile container and the launcher. It also...

December 2018 was the first time in a while when the Rocket Forces made no announcement of the missile launch plans for the upcoming year and said nothing about the number of missile launches conducted in the year that is...